US War with Iran Will Be ‘Disaster’ – Iranian Professor
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
Useful Idiots, LLC
4.5 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy: Bari Weiss' CBS Brings Back Russiagate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jeff-epstein-the-russian-spy-bari?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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For our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.
This week, amid volatile tensions, deadly protests, rumors of Mossad infiltration, and threats of war, the US and Iran are scheduled to have diplomatic talks, though one side pulling out would not be surprising as the US can’t seem to stop bragging about how sanctions destroyed Iran’s economy all while threatening to bomb them.
For some much-needed clarity on the issue, we spoke to Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari, author of Axis of Empire, who participated in leftist protests during Iran’s 1978-79 revolution.
He gives a history of Iran-US relations, mocks JD Vance’s obvious misunderstanding of how Iran’s government works, debates Aaron on which side is really responsible for the violence in recent Iranian protests, and analyzes Marco Rubio’s “unpredictable” diplomacy proposal.
Useful Idiots: Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the terms for what he says would be ‘meaningful talks.’ Do you think that Iran will accept those terms?
Afshin Matin-Asgari: To go back to the background of these talks, when Trump canceled the so-called Obama nuclear deal, he said that he did it to force a better deal on Iran. That was during his first term. And that never happened. All the pressure, sanctions, threats, and assassination of Iranian military personnel didn’t work.
So he joined Israel’s war on Iran.
What happens at this point? The Islamic Republic is in its weakest position it has ever been because of an accumulation of a lot of problems: it has domestic unrest, the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah in Syria, is gone, it’s more vulnerable than it ever was to military attacks.
So Bahrain has accepted to come to negotiations. If Trump can make the Islamic Republic accept some of his terms, he could claim victory, impose the new deal on Iran, and kind of walk away from this, which may not be a bad thing because it at least averts a full-scale military confrontation, something that everyone knows would be a disaster. But it can’t be predicted.
Our full interview with Professor Matin-Asgari is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!
00:00 Intro
00:59 Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy?
09:30 Afshin Matin-Asgari interview
11:43 Responding to Rubio's terms
22:56 JD Vance clearly doesn't understand how Iran's government works
43:45 US Officials can't stop bragging about destroying Iran's economy
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Halper. |
| 0:07.9 | I'm Erin Matte. Thanks so much for being here. Our website is Useful Idiots Podcast.com. |
| 0:12.2 | Go there to support the show and get bonus content. This week we'll be looking at the latest in Iran. |
| 0:17.7 | There are talks supposed to be going on between the U.S. and Iran unless, of course, |
| 0:23.2 | one side pulls out, which you never know is always a possibility, especially as the Trump |
| 0:27.8 | administration can't stop bragging about how their sanctions destroyed Iran's economy. And |
| 0:32.0 | even as talks are happening, it's still threatening constantly to bomb. So under these circumstances, it's pretty difficult to imagine success, but we all kind |
| 0:42.4 | of hope against what we can see before our eyes that maybe just maybe peace can be achieved. |
| 0:47.4 | And we'll be speaking to Professor Afshin Matine Ascari. |
| 0:51.4 | He is a history professor and author of a brand new book called Axis of Empire History of Iran-U.S. Relations. |
| 0:59.5 | But first, we have a weekly segment where we recap the week in the news called the Friday Free For All. |
| 1:04.5 | It's for our paid subscribers. If you're a free subscriber, here's a preview. |
| 1:10.3 | One of the biggest stories of the week, everyone's talking about it, the release of the Epstein |
| 1:14.3 | files, the Justice Department putting out more than three million documents. And the documents, |
| 1:20.9 | look, people can debate what they signify. My views on this have been well known. I don't think some of the maximalist claims about |
| 1:29.9 | a pedophile blackmail ring on behalf of the Mossad. I don't think that's been borne out by |
| 1:35.1 | the evidence. Others will disagree. Maximilist view. You mean like Jelaine Max? Yes, yes. Very good. Yes. |
| 1:43.1 | Yes. But what we can, I think, all agree on, or most people can agree on, is that Epstein had deep ties to Israel. He was very close with a hood Barack, the former's late prime minister, helping him try to broker some business deals. His lawyer, after all, was Alan Dershowitz, one of the most fanatic supporters of Israel in the U.S. And Epstein himself was a big fan of Israel. So there's something in one of the files about how he doesn't like Israel. He can't stand that place. Well, that was a reference to him not wanting to visit Israel. Right, right, right. But in terms of the government of Israel, I think it's safe to say he was a supporter. |
| 2:19.4 | Yes. |
| 2:20.1 | So despite all this, despite the well-documented ties to Israel, you have a different country being named as the state actor behind Epstein and working with Epstein. |
| 2:33.7 | And you'll never guess who it is. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I was going to say the good news, guys, is that don't worry, the media's on it. They really care about international connections. They really care about connections to foreign governments. The bad news is that the one that they're talking about is not Israel, but say it with us now, Russia. So let's take a look at some of these headlines. Here's |
| 2:53.2 | the telegraph. Epstein's links to Putin and Kremlin spies raised fears he was Russian agent. |
... |
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